Etiquette on social media?

Is there an unwritten code of etiquette for social media, particularly Facebook?

I haven't had to unfriend anybody yet. I am picky about who I accept in the first place, so my Friends really are my friends. But ...I do employ partial blocking of people who post 45 times a day, telling me they're going shopping, they're in the shop, they've just bought a can of beans, they're thinking of buying another can of beans, what do we think? Etc. And people who post umpteen joke videos, 'share this or you're not my friend' demands, and links to everything under the sun every 10 minutes. This really clogs up my newsfeed, and presumably everybody else's these people are also Friends with.

Is there some kind of etiquette we should all be following on social media? To sort of 'limit' the number of times we post inessential information—per day?

I'm not sure what the average age of your Facebook friends is but that all sounds like tween status updates where your friends feel the need to post anything and everything.

My feed was once similar to how you described, but now most of my Facebook friends rarely post immature stuff like that. If I were to log in to Facebook tonight and one of my friends were to say please share this video or we are no longer friends I would seriously see the need to reevaluate my life.

Eventually your friends will out grow this sort of thing and when they do trust me, it will be much more interesting to check out your news feed.

I'm from the old school of social networking. Want to interact with your friends? Go for a pint at the weekends. Phone them for a chat. Drop round for a cup of tea.
Never been on Facebook, have no intention of starting.
Sorry if that's no help whatsoever but I felt like getting that off my chest.

@outsider and @the1 - I had to laugh, reading your responses! Believe it or not, most of my friends are in the 50-65-year age range! I think if they were going to 'grow up' they'd have done it a long time ago.

And while I totally agree with keeping in touch face-to-face, when possible, Facebook allows me to keep in touch with friends who are several thousand miles away now. I live in Scotland, but I'm originally from the Midwest in the USA.

Interestingly, most of the 'share or you're not my Friend' folks are British. However, the 'joke video' posters (some of which are quite funny, and I don't mind the posts ...just the NUMBER of them from single individuals) are pretty evenly divided.

I love Facebook. It allows me not only to share stuff with my old friends, many of whom I'm unlikely to ever see again in the flesh, but it allows us to interact as a group once again, even thought we're now scattered all around the globe (The Philippines, Honduras, Germany, Greece, Canada, USA, England, etc.) And it's a great way to disseminate personal information among us all, share photos, etc.

Like so much else, it's just a few apples that spoil the barrel. Hard to get angry with them, because they are having fun and mean well. But it's dispiriting to get up every morning to find the newsfeed loaded with this kind of thing, all from only a couple of people.

Is there an unspoken etiquette regarding the frequency of postings? That was really what I wondered. I try never to post more than maybe twice a day, and I leave many unposted days in between. It's the stuff that's not personal or incredibly trivial that clogs up the newsfeeds, really. That's what bothers me.

Is there an unspoken etiquette regarding the frequency of postings? That was really what I wondered. I try never to post more than maybe twice a day, and I leave many unposted days in between. It's the stuff that's not personal or incredibly trivial that clogs up the newsfeeds, really. That's what bothers me.

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I think it genuinely depends on your personality and how you were brought up. I'm a shy person, really, until you get to know me! I was also raised in a family where etiquette and manners were taught, so the number of Facebook posts I send out are no more than two a day, like you. If you simply don't want to see posts by certain people on your news feed but still want to be 'friends' with them, just click on the down arrow on the top right hand corner of the post in your news feed and click 'unfollow'. Then click 'I think it's annoying or uninteresting' and you're done!

I think it genuinely depends on your personality and how you were brought up. I'm a shy person, really, until you get to know me! I was also raised in a family where etiquette and manners were taught, so the number of Facebook posts I send out are no more than two a day, like you. If you simply don't want to see posts by certain people on your news feed but still want to be 'friends' with them, just click on the down arrow on the top right hand corner of the post in your news feed and click 'unfollow'. Then click 'I think it's annoying or uninteresting' and you're done!

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Yeah, that's basically what I've been doing, although I tend to do it to the people themselves rather than what they've posted. Blocking each and every unwanted post takes longer than just ignoring them, sometimes. I do hate 'blocking' people who are essentially really nice folks, but I guess that's the price.

@jannert well that's actually really funny. If my friends were posting updates that were getting on my nerves, I'm sorry but I would probably unfriend them! I've done it before

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Well, I've twiddled with the idea, but as I said, they are all people I actually know, not friends of friends, etc. I think partially blocking them is the answer. They don't know I've done it, so their feelings aren't hurt. I can't very well tell them to stop, because that means they'd have to stop altogether, and I think SOME people enjoy getting up to that kind of thing every morning. And by only partially blocking them, I can send them personal messages, AND they can keep tabs on me. So, so far, so good... but Facebook ought to come with an Idiot Guide to Etiquette, kind of like our 'rules' section on this forum!

You can hide them, so you don't get their posts, but you can still go to their page when you want to see what they're up to. You can also make them into a lower category -- that is, you can set it so you only see some of their posts.

I had to do this a couple times. One woman was constantly, and I mean constantly posting about 1) how many emails she had in her inbox and 2) what she had/made or what her husband had/made for dinner, or sometimes for breakfast or lunch. And that was about 95% of what she posted. So I hid her.

Another friend constantly posted weird status updates (always in the 3rd person) about every errand he ran, every trip to the grocery store, every lunch and dinner, and what he purchased from a catalog or at the mall. He'd go to a store, say he bought something there, and then post a link to the store's website. It was really annoying. So I changed my settings so I only saw some of what he posts.

The only other person I hid was constantly "vaguebooking." That is, she was constantly posting things like "Why are some people so cruel?" But then she wouldn't say WTF she was talking about. That irritates me more than checking in at a restaurant.

You can hide them, so you don't get their posts, but you can still go to their page when you want to see what they're up to. You can also make them into a lower category -- that is, you can set it so you only see some of their posts.

I had to do this a couple times. One woman was constantly, and I mean constantly posting about 1) how many emails she had in her inbox and 2) what she had/made or what her husband had/made for dinner, or sometimes for breakfast or lunch. And that was about 95% of what she posted. So I hid her.

Another friend constantly posted weird status updates (always in the 3rd person) about every errand he ran, every trip to the grocery store, every lunch and dinner, and what he purchased from a catalog or at the mall. He'd go to a store, say he bought something there, and then post a link to the store's website. It was really annoying. So I changed my settings so I only saw some of what he posts.

The only other person I hid was constantly "vaguebooking." That is, she was constantly posting things like "Why are some people so cruel?" But then she wouldn't say WTF she was talking about. That irritates me more than checking in at a restaurant.

I haven't checked Facebook in quite some time. Can hardly stand the site, to be honest. On the other hand, I'm active on Google+. The reason is that Google+ is based around interests and not acquaintances, so I have tons of people I'm following for music, literature, Linux, and so on. The only downside is my stream is so active that I might have 1500 posts come through in the course of a day (no, I don't read all of those; I should probably pare down my 'circles' a bit).

I think "social media etiquette" depends a little on what the network is, and moreso on the circles of friends you have. LinkIn is obviously going to be more professional. I've seen plenty of stuff on Facebook people probably should have just self-censored. Then again, I don't really censor myself...

I do think pointless information posts are a real problem, especially with they youngest generation who grew up with smart phones and social media.

I'm from the old school of social networking. Want to interact with your friends? Go for a pint at the weekends. Phone them for a chat. Drop round for a cup of tea.
Never been on Facebook, have no intention of starting.
Sorry if that's no help whatsoever but I felt like getting that off my chest.

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I think there's a lot to be said for this. How many potential friends and perhaps more have we all not made over the last decade because technology and social media enables us to get what we need staring at a computer screen or phone or some shit? Like music; back before it was all there for us at the swipe of a screen, people had to go and hunt for it-- join communities, go to specific bars or clubs, all of which was a chance to meet new people and broaden your horizons. Now, there's no value in it. It's all there in front of us, we don't have to work or hunt for it. Libraries continuing to close down thanks to Kindles and Amazon; my gran is lonelier than ever, she used to spend hours at a time in those, hunting for books. There's a hell of a lot to be said for foregoing social media entirely and keeping it real.

... he says, tapping a keyboard, on a forum, claiming hypocrisy is overrated.

As you know Jan, I do indeed have FB page, but you see how much I use it to inform friends of what's going on. I post some pics from time to time, the odd vid, or something I find interesting, that I think my friends might dig, but asides from that, I mainly use it to 'see' who is online at any given time. I primarily use FB as an instant messenger. I'd rather type than phone. I'm far more comfortable expressing myself in type than by speech. It's one of the reasons I write.

'share this or you're not my friend'

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My answer to that would be: Consider yourself unfriended. But... that said, in the early days of the net, I made the acquaintance of a nice American girl and we wrote to each other regularly. She had an absolute phobia of that kind of chain letter/email bumf. She sent them on to me for 'safe' disposal. She physically couldn't bring herself to do it for fear of the consequences.

I must be turning into a grumpy old woman. As I age, I've become a bit of a troglodyte. I go out rarely, preferring to spend my time at home. I have a very small tightly knit group of friends. We are scattered location-wise, so without the net, I'd feel completely adrift from what is going on in their lives, so as much as people knock social media, it suits me down to the ground.

Gotta say though, some people take it too far. My best mate actually has 'My toilet' as a locale so he can inform the world when his bowels move. The other day, just for a laugh, I gave his toilet a five star review, (much like a restaurant review) citing how wonderfully clean the enamel, the plushness of the t.p. quality of the soaps, and the fluffy opulence of his towels.

I have a lot of acquaintaices on fb that I wouldn't exactly call close friends, most of them writing related. And I practise the unchecking of the box "show updates" under "friends" for each one of those I really don't care about what they're doing between the times we meet, because they, like your friends, often post the most uninteresting things (and they are adults too) and I don't want to have to go through all that sh*t several times a day. That way, when we meet, we also have something to talk about since I don't know every single thing they've been doing, buying, watching, people they've seen etc the last months.

I think we'll start having productive conversations about social media the day we stop drawing a line between online and real. Online is real.

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Is it? I mean, we're all abstractions on here right? My name says it's Liam and you presume the photo to be of me and they are but that's only gonna carry as much faith as what you wanna put into it. I could be a 53 year old woman living in Nicosia; going through the worst mid-life crisis and dealing with it by impersonating a young man. Frankly, so could you. I'm never gonna know for sure, none of us are. Every interaction on things like this is filtered, abstract. Without the immediacy of real conversation, where we all don't have the time to construct an 'ideal' response and we can see each other with all our flaws, unfiltered, I would argue all we're seeing are characters, usually the combinations of all our best traits. I'll be a heel, for the sake of it.